This Time Last Year

Here are some photos from a year ago, of a dinner our friends Annie and Janet made for us on the bridge at Onemilebridge:

Last Thursday twelve months ago was our last day in our Tasmanian house. We spent the day cleaning as the movers hauled our numbered and catalogued boxes into their truck.

Farmdoc concentrated on the shed while inside the house I moved from room to room, cupboard to cupboard, scrubbing, wiping, dusting. A friend came by to collect one last load for the tip and a few cast offs to distribute. Late in the afternoon the new owners arrived for a last minute inspection and to ask a few questions. The real estate agent who'd brokered the sale came too, bearing a gift. I barely lifted my head from my cleaning.

I can still feel the current of tension that seethed through my body. I was determined to leave the house as clean as possible for its new occupants. I wanted this young couple to have an easy start in their new home.

I think I was also hiding in those cupboards and drawers from the magnitude of the change.

We were leaving a house, a dog, a property, a village and friends. A life we'd built up over a lot of years.

Our decade at Onemilebridge had been important to us in many ways. And now it was over.



That afternoon, after we'd left the house as clean as we could, we drove the long way around to our next-door neighbour's house. For years we'd walked and driven through our sycamore forest or across the paddock to her place, arriving for dinner on our ATV or in gumboots. Now those paddocks and that forest didn't belong to us any more so we arrived as all her visitors did, driving up her front driveway.

We slept that night at her house and spent our last day in Tasmania gazing across at our farm, knowing that those familiar paddocks belonged to someone else now; doing some last minute chores, and having lunch with another friend.

That evening I flew to Melbourne while Farmdoc took the ferry across. Unexpectedly, our friends James and Iris saw us off, so that their dear faces were our last sight of Tasmania.

The morning of the 17th of March, a year ago yesterday, Farmdoc and I drove up the driveway of Daylesford Organics, the farm belonging to our oldest daughter and her family, in time for a welcome breakfast of pancakes and coffee. It was the beginning of the next stage in our lives.

I can feel now all the emotions that belong to that period - sadness, anxiety, fear, excitement - but I couldn't feel them then. I was numb. I think I stayed numb for months while we sorted our belongings and set ourselves up in our rented cottage.

Then, as we began the process of building a new house and a new life in a new community, without my even noticing it I started to thaw out. But that's a story for another time.

Welcome Bee and Ra

I know, I know. Long time no blog. I’ve left you in suspense all these months. The last time I wrote we were weeping outside the locked gates of Eden. Did they cross Bass Strait alive? you wondered. Did they realise that they'd made a huge mistake, and do they now wish to return to the south island?

Well, yes and no. Yes, we made the move safely, all our possessions and ourselves intact. And here we are, close to our two oldest daughters and their families, ensconced in a rented cottage while across two paddocks our new house takes shape. So no, we don’t want to return.

We arrived to fanfare, goodie baskets and a welcoming committee.

The last couple of weeks back there and the first couple of weeks here were hard. I felt bruised. There was the physical work involved in sorting and packing all our possessions and then at the other end unpacking what we thought we’d need for the next twelve months, and storing the rest. But mostly it was the emotional work of closing a chapter in our lives. We’d been in Tasmania for over two decades!

I spent hours, while I should have been wrapping things in butchers paper, reading over my old journals. I burnt a lot of them. Right now I don’t completely understand why I did that and whether I’m going to be sorry later. It’s just that there were dozens, and they were full of whingeing about long-resolved problems. It seemed like I didn’t even know who that person was any more. I thought if I died (and this move felt like it might just kill me) then I didn’t want to subject anyone else to having to read that stuff. And those books took up so much room. Anyway, there are still a couple of boxes worth to go into my new study, and I'm constantly filling up new ones. It's a habit - or perhaps an addiction.

And now we love it here.

We’re here to cheer up and to cheer on, to help and to be helped, and to enjoy our daughters and their families. We are around to celebrate the small achievements and the huge ones, to bear witness to milestones. We're close to good coffee and a great community, and I'm near enough to my dad to be able to see him regularly.

It's been especially amazing to be part of the excitement of the launch of Vantastic, Kate's wonderful book.

How lucky are we? Don't answer that; I know the answer already. Very lucky indeed!

Recipe For Moving House

Take one reasonably settled existence. 

Add some hopes, some dreams, a dash of ageing. 

Throw together the past, the present, the future, some friends, some family, a pinch of mortality. 

Fold this mixture into a house full of possessions – furniture, books, china and cooking pots - and a shed full of stuff.

Wrap in butchers paper and pack in cardboard boxes. 

Pour into a 20-foot container.

Drive down the driveway, taking in all that you see

Adding slowly that this will be the last time 

Lock the padlock on the gate - with you keyless on the other side

Ship goods across Bass Strait and follow in ute.

On the move

Farmdoc and I are on the move. Well, not exactly yet, but the decision has been made. Onemilebridge is officially on the market. Note I didn't say, 'for sale,' but used the euphemism, 'on the market'. I guess that expresses my ambivalence about the whole thing.

We've been in Tasmania for about 20 years now, the last nine here in Onemilebridge. We've built up a whole life in Mole Creek - friends who feel like family, community, a landscape that has entrenched itself inside us. We built this house, established a vegetable garden and orchard, fenced paddocks, released wombats, raised generations of goats and sheep.

I've done the best writing of my life here. We've hosted house guests from Tasmania, the mainland and abroad. We've welcomed visitors in good times and in bad. This has been a home with all that implies.

Often when we've driven down the driveway and I've looked across at the majestic Great Western Tiers, I've found myself humming that song from Camelot, 'If ever I would leave you.' Each season we say to each other, 'Oh this is the best time of year here.' When I know I'm returning to the mainland for a length of time, I try hard to fix the beauty of the place in my mind, to keep it there while I'm gone. I'm not sure it really works.

Now I think to myself all the time, we'll never again live in such solitude, silence and beauty. And it's true. It's just a fact.

But the time has come. Farmdoc's cardiac disease has shaken us and now we are moving to live close to family. Very close. A twenty-acre block  that is across the road from Daughter Number One and a short drive (or a long walk) from Daughter Number Two. What we lose in privacy we will gain in closeness to our daughters and their families. We will be able to help them in their lives and be involved with our grandchildren. I will be a train ride from my father; and my brothers and Farmdoc's sister will be able to go for a Sunday drive and drop in for lunch. We have plans for volunteer work in the community and to continue farming on a miniature scale. We'll build a new house modelled on this one.

Onemilebridge now has her own web presence so she can strut her stuff for potential buyers.

It's an exciting time. Really it is. Really...